Out of Mind
by kitty london
Summary: After POTO, Erik travels Europe in search of Christine's past and his own.
1. Chapter 1

Note: I don't own the Phantom of the Opera or any characters connected with it. Another Note: This story is set in the movie/musical universe. Sorry, Gaston Leroux.

Out of Mind

Chapter 1

On an evening in late September, the alley behind Paris' Opera Populaire found itself host to a grim but intriguing little party. A carriage was pulled up flush with the scullery door; it was a little two-horse affair, heavily travel stained. The driver was a burly but amiable old man, who stood stamping his feet against an unseasonable chill, and staring up in wonder at the structure before him. Though the fire that had devastated the building was more than six months past, repairs had been slow to start. The papers were still jawing over it, threading out tedious suspicions and ghost stories. Lately there had been talk of not reopening the place at all. It looked haunted enough, the driver thought. Half the windows were blasted out. The giltwork near the roof was blackened and looked as if it might crumble at any moment. Charred velvet hangings fluttered behind one window. And the two women standing against the wall only added to the eeriness of the scene. 

The driver had been trying his best not to look at them. First, because they had already paid him, which seemed to be their primary duty; second, because they didn't seem to want any attention; and third, because looking at them made him nervous. He did glance their way now and again, though. And he thought he recognized the older of the two from some newspaper photos. She had worked here. At first he thought she was the one leaving. After all, she had had the money, and the few modest pieces of luggage for him to load onto the back. But when he asked, she shook her head.

"He will only be a moment."

That had been five minutes ago. At last, just when his horses had begun to nose about in the rubble in search of some grass, a shadow appeared in the doorway. The driver's heart did a somersault – for one wild moment, he was sure he had seen a ghost. Then the figure stepped forward and revealed itself to be an ordinary man, with a scarf and hood wound about most of his face to deter the cold. Before he had the chance to make out any more details, the fellow had slipped into the carriage and disappeared.  
Erik glanced about the carriage interior without much interest. There were shades to cover the windows, which pleased him. It was nearly as dark as the cellar he'd just come from. He had taken his time lingering about in his old rooms, touching the furniture and extinguishing the last candles, but it had really been unnecessary. He felt no sorrow at leaving. He could not think of that monstrous shell as his home anymore. Nor did the traveling worry him. Of money there was no shortage, and of the world he had no fear, not anymore. Fear had died in him with his other emotions, on that night almost a year ago.

He did not care where he went or what occurred. He would have been content to stay where he was and let his lair become his coffin. As he ducked from one interior to the next, he did not even mark the change in temperatures. Seasons meant even less to him now than they had before, when he sometimes stood by the basement grates just before dawn, when the city was cleanest, to enjoy the first stirrings of summer heat or a curious, invasive little winter breeze. Now he saw that it was autumn the way he saw the rest of the world, which was the way a sailor might see, with his spyglass, a strange ship on the horizon. There was the faint possibility that it could harm him, but he was too far away to care 

No, he didn't care. It was the Girys who proposed this trip and the Girys who arranged for the carriage. They were both there now: Madame with her skirts lifted well off the brickwork, with its smattering of garbage and broken glass, while at the same time pulling her shawl close about her shoulders - for she was getting thinner and felt the cold more than she once did. Her daughter stood to one side, fair and still as an ice sculpture. Meg too had lost weight since her friend's departure, but it was less a thinning out than a hardening, a certain coolness that had settled over her appearance and her character. It seemed that the physical and mental maturity which had been so slow in coming had caught up to her all at once, and was atoning for lost time. Her cheekbones had grown more prominent, her fingers long and almost frighteningly nimble. She was dressed in lavender. His jaded nerves took note of this because he still expected to see her ballet clothes, even after all these months. In his mind, she and Christine both wore white, and lately his mind had taken precedence over anything in the living world. The twilight made Meg's dress and skin glow ashen and unearthly. She looked like a dried flower, a spray of violets fallen from someone's gown after a ball, swept into a corner to die against the wainscoting. A reminder of past glories. The picture she and her mother made together was the most beautiful thing he had seen in half a year.

"Goodbye," he meant to say, but it seemed like a terrible effort. In the end he merely nodded, and for one moment looked Madame straight in the eye. She seemed to understand. The driver, taking this nod as a sign that all was ready, shut the door and clambered back into his seat with a squeaking of wood and leather. In less than a minute they turned their first corner, and the Opera Populaire vanished from sight. 


	2. Chapter 2

Note to all my Readers and Reviewers: Thanks so much for your comments! You categorically rock hardcore.

Something I forgot to mention: I rated this fic T mainly for one upcoming chapter, in which Erik – how shall I say this? – gets his freak on. If you think you'll be offended, I'll post a warning at the start of that chapter. Though it probably won't happen for a while. So stop salivating already.

And now, on with the show…

Chapter 2

_"Focus," he reminded Christine, for the third time. "You must feel the sound coming from you, or it will mean nothing." The scale died on her lips as his voice echoed around the room, seeming to come from everywhere at once. In fact he was speaking from a hole in the stone wall, but the acoustics in that part of the building were incredible. The two were alone in a dusty classroom, as alone as they ever got. Lately he had begun to feel the necessary layers of mortar and stone between them as acutely as if they'd been piled on his chest. _

_"Forgive me," said Christine, craning her neck towards the window, "but I do so want to see." There was a hanging today, somewhere nearby, and since dawn there had been horrible traffic on the street outside. The poor and the nobility alike had turned out to watch the spectacle of death, and it was quite a parade. _

"_Can't we break for a minute?" She asked. She was tall at thirteen, and her childish squeak of a speaking voice gave no clue as to the beauty that was unleashed when she sang. He began to wish she would sing all the time, or not bother to open her mouth. He bit back his impatience. Were all little girls this silly? His plan for her evolution from timid child into mature and luminous star had not made room for adolescence. She was so _wriggly_, suddenly. Once or twice she had even dared to speak back to him. It was infuriating, but what could he do? There was never any question of striking her: He wouldn't have had the heart to do so, and was too far away besides. Once he'd almost gnawed his tongue off, to keep himself from getting in a childish shouting match with her. There had been several occasions when he came closer than she would ever know to ruining his supernatural status. Now he just left the scene silently when he felt his temper rise. Being without him for a few days was punishment enough._

_There were shouts and some drunken warbling from outside. Christine, her lesson forgotten, went over to kneel on the window seat and press her forehead against the glass. The morning sunlight was yellow as butter. It revealed again how flawless her face was, hair mussed, skin unbroken. His heart melted for her as it always did. Precious thing. _

_"Who are they hanging?" She asked._

_"A murderer," he said, adjusting his sheet music behind the wall. He had heard the servants discussing it. A petty thief, who had stabbed a brigand and his woman in a back alley only two blocks away, just because they had too little money to buy him a night of drinking. He didn't tell Christine this, of course. She was rather impressionable. _

_Even with the sunlight pouring over her, she shivered. "How terrible," she said, "to hurt someone and not feel bad about it. Can you imagine? Killing someone who had as much right to be there as you?"_

Erik's head snapped back painfully. He threw up his hands to defend himself. It was a moment before he realized that no one was attacking him. The carriage had hit a pothole, or possibly a small dog. Or, if they were still in the city, an orphan. Erik smiled without humor. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. He had not slept properly in ages. His fitful dozes were full of dreams that were not really dreams anymore, but memories.

The carriage drew to a stop. He heard the creak of the driver's seat, and then a hesitant knock on his door. Reordering his scarf, he pulled back the window shade. The old man was there. He looked more than a little spooked.

"Excuse me, monsieur, but we've reached an inn. The horses need resting. Is there anything you require?" Erik chose not to reply.

"Just as well, monsieur. We're very near our destination."

"And where is that?" Erik asked – for it had suddenly occurred to him that he didn't know.

"Monsieur?"

"Where are we going?"

The old man was obviously stupefied, but he did a good job of holding it in. "I'm to leave you at St. Clair, monsieur."

"The sea port?"

"Yes. I was told you had a ticket for England. If there is some problem, I can certainly take you-"

"That will be all."

"Merci, monsieur." The man left quickly.

Erik searched his pockets for the wad of papers Madame Giry had given him before he left. There was a little money, a world map, and- nestled right in the middle was a wide ticket which proclaimed him a passenger on the _Plutonian_, bound for England's eastern coast. He slipped it back in his pocket, sighing. She really had thought of everything.

Despite the driver's reassurances, they did not reach St. Clair until after midnight. Not that Erik minded this – after his subterranean existence, sunlight rather hurt his eyes. He boarded quickly, second class, and immediately locked the door of his little cabin. He wished, above all, to keep a low profile. And he had no desire to let anyone know how easily he got seasick.

The ship was mercifully fast. Scarcely more than a day passed before it came to port in Brittany. As he walked down the gangplank with other weary citizens, face burrowed deep in his hooded cloak, he felt strangely refreshed – as close as he had come to refreshment in a long time, anyway. The last dregs of seasickness evaporated as his feet hit the firm ground. If he had ever been here before, he was far too young to know it. Everything was different, somehow, from the scent of the air to the color of the rats darting to and fro along the quay. The sun would rise soon, and the city would wake – but what manner of people they were, he couldn't be sure. With no destination in mind, Erik set his course inland and began walking, slowly, in the direction of a new life.


	3. Chapter 3

Note: Welcome to (dun-dun-DUN!) round three! Thanks again to all my lovely, lovely reviewers (especially for the tip about beheading vs. hanging – I'll set that right). And for those that want to know, the Christine's scarf episode mentioned in this chapter really happened in the book.

Chapter 3

He found his lodgings after an uncomfortably long walk. The room was mean and dirty; the single window was fogged with soot, and there was a water stain on the ceiling which seemed to spread even as he watched it. But it was as far from the ocean as he could manage for now, far enough that the smell of factories had mostly overpowered the hint of salt in the air. _Merde_, but he hated the sea. It was too bright, and it moved too much – he felt as if he had to watch all of it at once, to make sure it wasn't sneaking up on him. It was even worse here, where the gunmetal skies and the thick, stinking fog veiled the water so that you couldn't even see it. You couldn't see most things, he had noticed. It all blended together in the gray. How did the British remain so loyal to their Empire when it looked like a churchyard full of ghosts?

"I suppose that's what drives them to conquer more interesting places," he said aloud, and winced. Talking with himself was a bad habit – it was fine for underground when you had nobody to hear you, but this was the real world. It would take time for him to readjust.

With that in mind, he looked distastefully at the bed. Without removing his gloves, he lifted the edge of the ragged coverlet and examined the sheets beneath.

"_Mon dieu_." It was worse than he feared. He wondered why he hadn't spared ten more minutes to walk to the good part of town and check in at a real hotel. The money wouldn't run out any time soon. But no, that would bring up too many questions. Excuses would have to be made for his shabby luggage, for the hood and scarf. And frankly, he was too tired to make them. He was always tired these days, and he had not dared to sleep on the ship.

Erik spread his coat out over as much of the bed as it would cover, and lay down. After a moment's consideration he removed the hood, but not the scarf. The door didn't seem to lock all that well. Even in his numbed state, he knew he couldn't be too careful.

_Winter. He huddled with his cloak wrapped against the evening chill, looking down from a ceiling grate, his familiar vantage point onto the dormitory below. The older opera girls were crowded around tiny braziers placed here and there about the room, sometimes pushing the smaller ones away. Christine and Meg, both sixteen, had not yet earned this privilege. They were curled together in Christine's bed – conveniently near his grate - half hidden under an assortment of blankets and stolen costumes, talking of warmer climes._

"_I saw the sea once," Meg was saying. "Mother was sick, and they sent me to my cousin's so I wouldn't catch it. I was very young, of course. But I remember everything. I had ice cream almost every day, and I always gave some to the gulls. But these awful freckles came up all over my nose." To illustrate her point, she pressed her freezing nose against Christine's face. Christine shrieked and extracted one arm from the mound of covers to bop her friend on the head. The sight of her bare arm warmed him considerably more than his cloak had. _

_It had been several months since he noticed the almost imperceptible shift in his feelings for her. He might have quelled it if he tried, but he didn't see the point. The nature of his love couldn't change the fact that he loved her. He already had a deep passion for her voice, her mind, and her soul. What did it matter if he added her body to the list? There was nothing he would not do for her. There was nothing that would not be done. _

_Her skill was growing every day. Soon, he mused, it would only be a matter of choosing the right moment to put his plans into action._

_Meanwhile, Meg had begun to question her: how often had she seen the sea?_

"_We lived everywhere," said Christine, dreamily, unpinning her hair to let it flow down her back. "But we had a house that was my favorite, in Brighton. All sorts of people came through. Writers and artists, and their patrons. No one was ever bored or unhappy."_

"_That sounds wonderful."_

"_I was learning to read. I remember, there was a boy who used to read to me, all exciting, frightening things. And in the middle of a book he would make up something completely ridiculous, something that didn't fit in at all. I'd tell him to stop lying and he'd say, 'I'm not lying! It's right here on the page!' And he'd point to a lot of words I didn't understand yet. We had some terrific fights."_

_This caught his attention. He had never known her as anything but sweet and passive when dealing with her peers. _

"_Oh," said Meg, "is that the boy who saved your favorite scarf?"_

_Christine laughed. "The same. It was about to be carried out to sea. He nearly drowned himself. That's how we met."_

_She had a look on her face that was normally reserved for when he gave her extravagant praise. His pride gave a sick little twinge._

_Meg sighed and put her head on her friend's shoulder. This time Christine did not back away._

"_You're so lucky," she said. "All your stories sound as if they came right out of a play."_

_He was gone before he could hear her reply._

Erik sat bolt upright on the little bed, gasping. The scarf fell away, and he put his hand to his face instinctively, only to realize – again – that he was alone. His skin was clammy and his heart racing, as it so often was now when he awoke. He felt as if he were going to be seasick all over again. But none of that mattered. After months of tearing away at his sanity, the dreams had finally given him something back: a destination.

"Brighton," he whispered, and stood.


End file.
